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Der Tod Jesu

Introduction

During his lifetime, Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–1759), a younger contemporary of Bach’s, was one of the best-known exponents of Italian opera in Germany. He was born in Wahrenbrück, a village in the south of the present state of Brandenburg, attended school in Dresden, where he was originally trained as a choirboy at the famed ‘Kreuzschule’, and went on to study keyboard and composition when his voice broke. He gradually retrained his voice, becoming sufficiently proficient as a tenor to win himself a place in the court chapel of Braunschweig in 1725. There he also achieved a reputation as a skilled composer, rising several years later to the position of vice-Kapellmeister. For the marriage of Princess Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig to the then Prince Frederick of Prussia, a specially composed opera by Graun, Lo specchio della fedeltà, was performed. This work struck a chord with the prince, who subsequently engaged Graun for his own court chapel in Rheinsberg when the Duke of Braunschweig died several years later. Once the prince became King Frederick II, ‘the Great’, he appointed Graun his court Kapellmeister in 1741. In this position he became a leading figure in the renowned Berlin school that developed at Frederick the Great’s court, a school which also included his brother Johann Gottlieb, Kirnberger, Quantz, Benda and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Besides his task as a court composer, Graun was also commissioned to set up an (Italian) opera house in Berlin. This was duly opened a year later with the performance of his Cesare e Cleopatra. He would go on to compose some thirty Italian operas, including Montezuma, on a text by the king, as well as a great deal of instrumental music. However, although it represents only a limited portion of his œuvre, Graun became most famous for his religious music, and above all for his Der Tod Jesu.

Der Tod Jesu forms part of the long Christian tradition of musical settings of the Passion story for the period before Easter. The first suggestions of such a tradition date from as early as the late-Roman period. In the middle of the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great ordained that St Matthew’s account of the Passion story be read on Palm Sunday, with the St John Passion on Good Friday; the St Luke and St Mark versions were later also accorded appointed moments on, respectively, Wednesday and Tuesday of Holy Week. The Bible texts were originally chanted by the celebrant alone; only in the course of the fifteenth century were polyphony and an element of drama introduced into the genre.

There were two basic forms within the genre: the through-composed, fully polyphonic ‘Motet Passion’, and the ‘Chorale Passion’, in which the words of the evangelist were chanted monophonically, while the interventions of the ‘crowd’ (the so-called turba sections) and sometimes the words of Christ were set polyphonically. In the same period, some versions deviated from the standard gospel texts, in works known as summae passionis: texts compiled from the ‘highlights’ of the different gospels. This development towards greater variation and freedom, found initially in the Catholic liturgy, was continued further after the Reformation, although it met with some degree of resistance. For Luther, the suffering of Christ was to be experienced to the full by all believers, and not only in words alone. The musically heightened reading of the Passion story thus received an important place within the liturgy and its telling was spread throughout Lent. In Germany, the Passion thus became an important musical genre in which German translations of the gospel were generally used, as well as the summae passionis on German or Latin texts and shortened versions of the gospels. In musical terms, there was a tendency to hold fast to the simple Chorale Passion, in which only the turba sections were set to music in a simple form of polyphony. The composer actually would only provide music for these sections, as the largest portion of the text was chanted.

Halfway through the seventeenth century, a fundamental revolution in this tradition took place in northern Germany: composers added a continuo part and several solo instruments to accompany the vocal parts. This led to the creation of a new genre: the ‘Oratorio Passion’. There was more to this than simply the addition of instruments; the text of the gospel still formed the basis of the story but other sections were now added to the usual Bible text, including instrumental sinfonias, as well as hymns, parallel Bible passages and general reflections on the events. In the eighteenth century, this evolution developed further as a new form of Oratorio Passion arose which freed itself completely from the gospel text. New texts were written, such as B H Brockes’ Der für die Sünden dieser Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus, a text that composers such as Telemann, Handel and Mattheson set to music. The final stage of this evolution began around 1730 in Italy, in the development of the genre of Passion Music. Here not only the Bible text was abandoned but also the dramatic element. The result was a meditation on the Passion story, without dialogues, such as La passione di Gesù Cristo on a text by Metastasio and set to music by a number of composers, including Caldara, Jomelli and Paisiello.

Graun’s Der Tod Jesu may be numbered among these later works. The text is by Carl Wilhelm Ramler, written at the behest of Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, the king’s sister. This text was almost simultaneously set to music by Graun and Telemann, the two works receiving their premieres in March 1755, Graun’s version on March 26 in his opera house in Berlin, Telemann’s a week earlier, on March 19, in Hamburg. The rivalry between the two composers seems to have been a friendly one, however: the two corresponded extensively concerning the technical and aesthetic aspects of setting the text to music and would later perform each other’s work. The stylistic differences between the two works are nonetheless striking. Telemann represents the North-German, late-Baroque tradition, with all its complexity and preference for structure and colour. Graun, influenced by Italian opera, chose the path of lyricism and spontaneous melodies, using the harmonic language that had emerged from Classicism. In Der Tod Jesu there are fugal passages reminiscent of Bach but the horizontal nature of polyphony generally yields to a strong sense of harmonic progression. If a feeling of timelessness, an expression of higher things, is characteristic of Bach’s works, here personal expression gains the upper hand in a freer style. The text includes no dialogues or dramatic personages such as an evangelist-narrator or soloists with assigned roles. The soloists alternate (also exceptionally joining for duets) to present a free version of an episode from the Passion story in a recitative, followed by a poetic reflection on these events in an aria. After one or two of these individual interventions, the choir makes its answer, crowned by a chorale that could be sung by the whole congregation.

The central position of the chorales was an important factor in the success of the work. Graun’s Passion Der Tod Jesu was so well received that it was performed again the following year on Good Friday, a tradition that was then maintained at the Berlin court until 1884. Der Tod Jesu is thus an interesting case study in the continuity of performance practice. The work breathes the lyrical mood of the Italian opera which long enjoyed great favour with audiences. This, in combination with the central role of the chorales that were ideally suited to the Lutheran liturgy, ensured that this work would be one of the first great occasional works to enjoy a performance tradition of more than one hundred years.

We are left only with the question of why Der Tod Jesu disappeared from the repertoire at the end of the nineteenth century, to be replaced by the rediscovered Bach Passions. The answer may perhaps be found in the somewhat light tone of the work. The introverted passages are replaced by a cheerful and festive mood. This accorded with the theological vision of the Enlightenment, in which Jesus was worshipped primarily as a hero and the Passion story was set to a music that reflected the great joy brought to mankind through the effects of his suffering and death. This no longer suited the late-nineteenth-century vision of the Passion story, in which the sorrow at the injustice and suffering undergone by Jesus took the central place, aspects that are much more clearly present in Bach’s Passions. Der Tod Jesu thus disappeared from the repertoire, ripe for rediscovery in the twenty-first century.

Recordings

'When all is said and done, Kuijken and Hyperion have given us perhaps the most fully satisfying recording yet of the work—one not likely to be challe ...'Sigiswald Kuijken directs a flowing, sympathetic performance, characterised by moderate tempi, detailed yet gentle articulation, and a restrained—yet ...» More

Thou, who wept tears
On seeing Zion
Resolved to commit the crime
That led to its fall;
Where is the valley, where the cave
That hides Thee, O Jesus?
You who persecute His soul,
Have you already killed Him?

Gethsemane! Gethsemane!
Who is it that your walls can hear
Lamenting so fearfully and alone?
Who is dying so painfully and slowly?
Is it my Jesus? O finest of all human beings,
Dost Thou quake and tremble, like the sinner
Who is sentenced to death?
Behold! His strength is failing, weighed down
By the evil deeds of all the world.
His panting heart leaves its house,
His purple sweat courses down
His temples: He cries: My soul is afflicted
Unto death!

O hero, struck by all
Of Death’s quivers,
Thou dost hear those weaker ones
Who long for comfort at the graveside,
Thou wilt be their protective God.

When I am about to depart this life
And see the abyss open, when in vain
My spirit struggles to cling to life;
When I hear the Judge approach
With scales and thunder, and the universe
Trembles as he draws near,
Who will then be my protective God?

Who do I have other than Thee
To succour me in my final agony
With comfort and counsel?
Who will take care of my soul,
When my life comes to an end,
When I must struggle with death,
When all my senses grow weak?
Art Thou not my Saviour, O God?

Ah, my Emmanuel! There He lies, prostrated
In the dust, struggling towards death, gazing
Heavenward and crying out: Father,
Let this hour pass!
Take away the bitter chalice from my lips!
Thou wilt not! So be it! Thy will be done.
Exhalted, He rises from the astonished earth,
Strengthened by an angel’s hand.
And behold! The disciples are overcome with sleep;
Here they lie sadly slumped on the ground.
The friend of man observes them, saying,
As His beautiful face inclines to them:
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak;
And He bends down to touch gently Peter’s hand:
Are you too no longer awake?
O lie awake and pray, my brothers!

A prayer for new strength,
For the accomplishment of new works,
Parts the clouds and reaches the Lord,
And the Lord hears it gladly.

If I climb to the temple of virtue,
Struggling up the steep path:
I am goaded on
By the example of those
Who move sublimely
In beauty and hope above me,
And my journey is lightened
Through prayer and song.

Weapons clash,
spears gleam in the glow
Of torches, murderers force their way in:
I see murderers: ah! He is doomed!
Yet He without fear approaches
The foe; magnanimously He speaks:
Is it me you seek? If it is me you seek,
Let my friends depart.
Whereupon His timid companions flee.
They bind Him, they lead Him away.
Peter alone follows Him,
He follows from afar, too weak to help;
Compassionately he follows his Lord
To Caiaphas. What words I hear ring out!
It is Peter who now speaks:
I do not know this man,
I do not know him, I do not know him,
I do not know this man.
How far have you fallen from your noble-mindedness!
But behold! Jesus turns
And looks at him: he feels the gaze,
He turns,
He weeps bitterly.

Jerusalem cries savagely and bloodthirstily:
Let His blood be upon us, His blood be upon us,
And upon our sons and daughters!
Jerusalem is victorious, and Jesus bleeds to death;
Wearing purple, He is mocked by the people:
That He might suffer torment without comfort,
That shame might break His heart.
He stands there full of love,
Without sorrow or displeasure,
And wears His crown of thorns.
And an insolent, depraved and murderous hand seizes a stick
And beats His head: a river streams
Down His brow and cheeks.

Behold him: what a human being!
Compassion’s voice, from the tyrant judge’s seat,
Says: Behold, what a human being!
And Judea does not hear it,
And with outrageous fury raises up
The bleeding man onto the cross,
Where He is slowly to die.
He bears it willingly and faints.
No noble heart can now refrain from sadness,
Tears, long held in check, now flow.
But He, comforting Himself, looks round and says:
O daughters of Zion, do not weep,
O daughters of Zion, do not weep.

There stands the sad and fateful stake:
O innocent one, O just one, breathe
Your throbbing and suffering soul away. Woe!
It is not chains, not ropes that I see,
But sharpened nails! Jesus spreads His hands,
His dear hands, which accomplished such good works.
At every blow, the nails cut through
His nerves, his veins, his bones. He suffers
Patiently, remains serene, and hangs on the cross,
Raised up to be scorned, bleeding, suffering pangs of death,
On Golgotha.
You men of Israel, O summon pity
Into your hearts! Be not vengeful in death!
In vain: the fathers scorn him;
Their scorn is bitter, their faces grin with cruelty.
And Jesus cries: My Father, ah! forgive them:
For they know not what they do.

Who is the saintly one, bequeathed to us as an example,
And hanged together with these criminals?
You shall know Him by His virtue.
He forgets outrage, torture, fear of death, and thinks,
Maria, of you in your abandonment, and grants
This last will to His bosom friend:
O young man! O young man! That is your mother!
The disciple of Jesus hastens to fulfil His will:
And Jesus sees this:
And goes into greater raptures and feels no wounds,
Because He can now give a ray of comfort to the
Final sad hours of a truly penitent sinner:
He turns His face to the crucified sinner
By His side, and prophesies to him:
I tell you, you shall even today
Be with me in Paradise.

How splendid is the new world
That God reserves for the devout,
No human can acquire it.
O Jesus, Lord of splendours,
Thou hast also accorded me this place,
Help me to acquire it.
A small glimpse
Into that world
Of joy
Will enable me, in my weakness,
To die with ease.

Suddenly the repressed pain
Attacks the hero’s soul with fury: His heart
Rises up in His tensed breast. A dagger digs deep
In every vein. His whole body soars
Upon the cross. He feels
The sevenfold torment of death. He feels
Nothing but hellish pain,
Which penetrates His whole being; He cries:
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
And behold, darkness falls.
Now He sighs: I am thirsty, I am thirsty!
His subjects
Refresh Him with wine, mixed with gall.
Now His suffering has reached its peak;
Now He rejoices out loud, and says:
It is finished! It is finished!
Receive, O Father, receive, O Father, my soul!
And He inclines His head upon His breast and dies.

Seraphim descend from all the stars,
Lamenting loud: He is no more!
The entire earth echoes:
He is no more!

Tremble, Golgotha! He died upon your heights!
Flee, O sun, and do not brighten this day!
Break open, O earth, on which the murderers stand!
Open, O graves! Your Father ascends!
The earth that covers you
Is stained all over with blood.

He is no more! Let each day
Say to the next:
He is no more!
Let eternity lament and echo:
He is no more!